"ABSOLUTELY FALSE”

New Zealand Times, Volume XXXVI, Issue 8190, 3 August 1912, Page 4

"ABSOLUTELY FALSE”

No one in New Zealand is debarred from going on the land provided they have the ways and means.—The Hastings “ Tribune.”

That very excellent newspaper, the “Tribune*” is exceedingly angry with us for saying that “ of all the land in Hawke’s Bay—land so atrociously dear that none but rich men may bid for it —1,375,6X6 acres, or 46 per cent., or very nearly one-half, is quite unimproved.” It suggests that this. is absolutely false,” and declares it to be misleading to say, as we did, that “ not a shilling has been spent upon this land by the squatters who possess it, except in fencing and in xhe erection of notices to the people that • Trespassers will bo • prosecuted.’On the first of these statements our friends must really quarrel with the Department of Lands, for from its latest return of “ area in cultivation and in occupation ” the public may learn that of the 3,211,086 acres in Hawke’s Bay there are 1,375,616 acres “ in tussock, or native grass, and, unimproved.” When, therefore, we say that the only money spent by the owners of this vast area has been expended in fencing, we merely state the obvious. If there is any explanation to turn the point of these disastrous figures it seems to us that the “ Tribune ” might find more profitable employment _in putting it forward instead of making reckless charges of falsity. A challenge it makes that the names of the landowners who possess property on which no money has been spent in improvements is hardly permissible. We have no desire to pillory individuals or to bring the discussion down from the plane of principle to the personal level our misguided contemporary seems to hanker for. These landowners have done no wrong, and we are not going to pursue them or help stir up animosity against individuals. The whole of our argument on this question is that a system of ownership which permits the holder of land bt> take from the community the increment given to land by influences other than may bo due to his own labor and industry is socially objectionable. If the “ Tribune ” can dispose of that theory it.s friends with the million or so of acres, in “tussock and native grass” can go to sleep in peace. Our contemporary appears to imagine that we challenge “the right to property.” We do nothing of the kind. What we do ohal. lenge is the right to that increment in land by which the owner gets something to which he has no moral claim, and in this we stand supported by the front rank economists of every language. It may, perhaps, not be quite right to imply that the erection of notices to trespassers has involved any great expenditure in Hawke’s Bay. But, after , all, it is not very long since the youth of that but empty province were abruptly informed by advertisement in a local paper that poison had been placed on the blackberry bushes growing on the properties of certain persons of broad acreage 1